All Questions(ubuntu)

When I run apt-get upgrade on my Ubuntu 17.04 machine, sometimes it starts Dwarf Fortress by itself.

It has happened already at least two times, so it was probably not just some sort of one time thing. Also, the execution ofapt-get upgrade seemed to be paused until I manually quit the Dwarf Fortress, so it most probably wasn't caused by something else running in that time.

The console at that time said Unpacking xxx. where xxx was something with mysql in name. I don't however know which package exactly, as today, apt-get upgrade upgraded a lot of mysql related packages.

I would like to know what happens and how to stop it from happening.

In order to research what caused the installation of a given package, I'd like to get a list of packages which depend on that package. I couldn't find anything obvious in man dpkg.

I have run out of space on my WinXP virtual machine, which I only gave 10 GB space for when I created it. Is there an easy way to increase it to, say, 20 GB? I can't see any obvious option in VirtualBox settings.

The suggestion below gives this error

wim@wim-ubuntu:/media/data/winxp_vm$ VBoxManage modifyhd wim.vdi --resize 20000
VBoxManage: error: Cannot register the hard disk '/media/data/winxp_vm/wim.vdi' {46284957-2c09-4e70-8a49-bfbe0f7f681d} because a hard disk '/home/wim/VirtualBox VMs/winxp_vm/wim.vdi' with UUID {46284957-2c09-4e70-8a49-bfbe0f7f681d} already exists
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG (0x80070057), component VirtualBox, interface IVirtualBox, callee nsISupports
Context: "OpenMedium(Bstr(pszFilenameOrUuid).raw(), enmDevType, AccessMode_ReadWrite, fForceNewUuidOnOpen, pMedium.asOutParam())" at line 210 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp

Removing the .vdi from VirtualBox before calling VBoxManage command, then adding it back in, was successful. But now I can't boot the virtual machine, I get this worrying screen:

By the way, it says FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted.

The vdi must be reattached to the VM after VBoxManage command. Further, the partition will need to be resized from WITHIN windows, because you will have this empty space:

I was able to resize the partition easily using a bit of freeware called EASEUS Partition Master 9.1.0 Home Edition.

I see a lot of interesting programs out there that can only be obtained by adding a "PPA" to the system but, if I'm understanding correctly, we should stay within the official "repositories" for adding software to our system.

Is there any way for a novice to know if a "PPA" is safe or if it should be avoided? What tips should the user know about when dealing with a PPA?.

I would like to know how to resize images in Ubuntu. What is the easiest tool to do so?